Be worried. Be very worried.

Time Magazine tackles the topic of global warming for its cover story, and its diagnosis is far from optimistic. It was enough to make CNN notice and offer a summary of the story on its website. (Check out the link above.)

Alternet reports that the FDA has found benzene in soda:

Hard Times for Soft Drinks

After several trials, Cadbury-Schweppes’ chemists determined that the benzene was caused by a chemical reaction between the preservative sodium benzoate and ascorbic acid (Vitamin C). The effect was found to be especially prevalent in diet sodas, and shot up to even higher levels after products were subjected to extremes of heat and light. According to the documents, Cadbury-Schweppes’ Diet Crush was found to contain benzene at 25 parts per billion (ppb) — five times the acceptable EPA limit.

Another concern, and also somewhat obscure, are the long-term effects of the artificial sweeteners used in both regular and diet sodas. The dangers of Aspartame (the main component in NutraSweet and Equal) was only found after it was released on the market. Sucralose (the main component in Splenda, now widely used in sodas and energy drinks) is the hot new artificial sweetener with a deceptive campaign (”made from sugar”) that is hardly natural and cannot be confirmed to be 100% safe. (The voluntary “long-term” study of Sucralose’ effects conducted by the company and submitted to the FDA lasted a “long” 6 months. Alas, this is the normal minimum requirement for a lot of new products seeking FDA approval. For the topic of the FDA and food safety, I recommend the book Food Politics by Marion Nestle.)

Whole Foods currently refuses to carry any products that contain aspartame, saccharine or sucralose.

More about articifial sweeteners:

Life After Aspartame (Tate & Lyle, the producers of Splenda, now gearing up act like Monsato as far as defending its highly lucrative product.)

The Potential Dangers of Sucralose (This page may be unviewable by people in the UK.)

Directory of Sugar Substitute Studies

There are strong environmental reasons for becoming vegetarian (some of which in my opinion would make sense to the staunchest carnivore), and this month’s This Green Life from the National Resources Defense Council sums out some of them. Whatever one’s reasons for avoiding the consumption of meat,the environmental facts may be the hardest to argue against.

For further reading, I recommend John Robbins’ The Food Revolution. The above linked article also has links to Facts about Pollution from Livestock Farms and The Issues: Factory Farming.

Also, check out your state’s pollution scorecard:
Scorecard: The Pollution Information site

I was absolutely delighted when the local indepedent newspaper, Independent Weekly, ran a feature about green roofing. (Wikipedia defines it: A green roof is a roof of a building which is partially or completely covered with plants.)

The Indy’s story is here: Raising the (green) roof: Green roofs are the new black tar.

Some benefits of green roofs: natural insulation against heat and cold, helping treat air pollution, reducing storm water run off, providing food for people (depending on your plant choice) and providing a habitat for wildlife.

More resources about green roofs:

Green Roof Project

Green Roofs for Healthy Cities

American Society of Landscape Architects

US Green Building Council

Emory Knoll Farms

ELT Green Roof Systems

I forgot one more benefit of green roofs: They look cool!

Imagine the primordial beginning of life on this planet. There is rock and water - matter. The orb of the sun sends out heat and light - energy. Eventually, over thousands of milleninia, through chemical and physical processes scientists still don’t fully understand, single-celled bacteria emerge. With the evolution of photosynthesizing blue-green algae, a monumental change takes place. Chemistry and physics combine with the sun’s physical energy, and the Earth’s chemical mass turns into the blue-green planet we know.” - William McDonough & Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

This is a brilliant book, and of course, now I’m partial to the above quote for obvious reasons.

I don’t think there’s a way to start a new journal that doesn’t sound awkward, so let’s just jump straight to it.

The first journal post is going to be a technical post - I have to admit now I’m having trouble getting BlueGreenPlanet to display apostrophes and quotation marks correctly all the time. I’ve played with Unicode, and HTML code (currently using things like “& rsquo ;” to get an apostrophe to display) but what further complicates the code is that card text is being passed and saved through variables, and I suspect that somewhere in the passing is where sometimes the code gets screwed up. The ways around it are not very visitor-friendly, poring online gives me no new fixes. Maybe someone reading this can enlighten me.

Still currently on the site’s plate of upcoming additions/developments:
The Green Links Directory
The Astronomical Events Calendar (Just this March alone, we’ve got a lunar eclipse, solar eclipse, and of course, vernal equinox coming up.)

Constantly ongoing:
Looking for contributors
Developing the blog and finding websites and directories to submit BGP to.